Blue Origin will develop a rocket engine with ULA
company Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has signed a major partnership agreement with United Launch Alliance on the joint development of a new rocket engine for rockets Atlas and Delta. The company United Launch Alliance is a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. This is the BE-4 engine as developed by Blue Origin engaged in more than three years. Now the engine is tested in the company's development center in Texas. Recall that the ULA has contracts with the Ministry of Defense United States regarding the supply of rockets to launch military and government satellites.
In a joint statement, the parties said that cooperation in the development of the engine will quickly complete its output to a commercial operation. The agreement provides for co-operation for 4 years from the start of testing in 2016 at the real launch vehicles and the first commercial flight in 2019. Recall that in recent years in the United States are increasingly talking about the development of "home" space technology: manned aircraft for ISS, own rocket engines, new types of rocket fuel, starting systems. Particularly active in such conversations began to take place against the background of the situation around Ukraine, which has led to a worsening of Russian-American relations.
After the introduction of a succession of American sanctions against Russian companies and sectors of the economy, the United States itself were partly based on a number of Russian developments. Experts say that the situation with Ukraine has been a catalyst in the United States, while the first of the "depending on the Russian" in the United States started talking to 2011, simultaneously with the winding down of space shuttle flights. now NASA actually have no choice but to work with the Russian Space Agency at least 2017 for manned flight programs. After 2017, NASA hopes to use as vehicles for the development of near-Earth Flight Boeing and SpaceX.